We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things
by Lyrical Logic
Summary: There are some things a mother should teach her child. These are not those things. Yuffie, Motherhood and the children she royally screwed over.


We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things.

There are many things a mother should teach her child. These are not those things.

Disclaimer- Nothing I own

0o0o0

As a child she had always wanted her mother to pay more attention to her.

When she got what she wanted -which was inevitable really, she screams pretty loud- she thought her mother would teach her to sow or to cook. Which in retrospect was rather stupid, her mother could neither sow nor cook. Instead she was taught the ways of a ninja, she was taught to bend and break and twirl and flip and by Wednesday she had decided that she didn't want to be this kind of ninja. Her mother's kind of ninja. But she kept at it, it was the only way her mother would talk to her, laugh with her and she knew the second she stopped being trainable, interesting, more like her mother (and back then less like her father), she'd be gone again. And quite frankly she missed her mother a touch too much to let a chance like this get away.

By Friday she was exactly what her mother wanted.

She was sharp, quick and bendy. It was everything she didn't want to be. She wanted to be soft and dance, she wanted to snap not bend and every time her mother gave her a shuriken she always wanted to swap it for an arrow. A shuriken is too predictable she thought, her mother used one and if she did people would know what to expect, if she used an arrow people would think she was her own and not just another extension of her mother.

Eventually her mother realised that her daughter was never going to be able to use shuriken's the way she did. So she tried other weapons, kunai, spears, guns. When she tried a gun it was heavy and cold and far too much like dead weight, but the metal felt comfortable and when she compensated by lifting her other hand and pointing the gun where she wanted it to go, she could feel it like an extension of her arm. She fired three shots straight through the kill holes and her mother grabbed the gun and threw it away. She said that there was no way she could use one. The look of absolute horror and guilt that crossed her face was enough to make her promise to never use one again.

The next day she tried using swords and when her mother passed her a katana she threw it over her shoulder and grabbed a double pair of swords; one long and the other short. The look her mother gave her, the one look she can still remember, was full of care and amusement and shadows of doubt.

The next day she had a pair of swords with her name engraved on them.

-o-o-o-

The day her oldest brother left is one of the saddest days of her life.

She can't really remember when the day was and she's not really surprised. It's a day that haunts her dreams for many reasons. But she can remember the smells and the feel of the sun on her back and the season. Lilies, hot, summer. The lilies bloomed all year round then and she remembers that it was all because of him. She remembers sitting on her mother's knee and hearing her brother tell stories about The Women with Flowers In Their Hair and her mother's arms tightening around her. She remembers falling asleep listening to them and dreaming of church's and the girls that lived in them. When he gets to the end of the story she cries, whether she's awake or not.

She remembers him singing about chasing cars and-and-

Then her memory stops.

She can't remember why he left her but she thinks it had something to do with the war she kept hearing about.

-o-o-o-

It was three weeks later when mother taught her how to steal.

It was the most important lesson her mother taught her and she'll never forget it. It was also the same day she realised that her mother had no idea how to love her. Her brother had told her that she was going to do something special for training and naturally she'd thought of presents and her mother taking her to the beach. When she asked her father about it he said she'd better make a list of all the Materia she needed. She'd counted all the Materia she had the day before and came up with a list of everything she wanted. She was at the meeting place young and shiny eyed. And when her mother came out cross and tight faced a little bit of her died. Her mother had given her a list of rules she had to follow, then set her on the treasury building and told her not to come home till she'd gotten everything on the list. She hadn't understood then, but her mother was completely serious. She'd managed to get all the easy stuff on her list, Sense, Bio and alot of unmastered fire and ice. When it got dark she called it a day and headed home, when the guards refused to let her in something cold stabbed at her gut. Luckily the people in the streets were kind enough to give her some food and she planned how to best get what she wanted. She fell asleep in the gutter with her arm wrapped all the way around her bag of Materia and when she woke up the next morning, she panicked and checked that no one had robbed her during the night.

She stayed on the streets for another 3 days and on the fourth –when kindness turned into annoyance and she started to smell really bad. She snuck into the treasury again and stole more Materia. No one was surprised when she came back to her piece of gutter with a fuller bag and she felt the first twinges of guilt. She pushed it away when she realised that this could work to her advantage, if she stole some Materia –just a couple pieces, every few nights and sold one or two fire and ice a day for food she could steal the rest and no one would suspect a thing.

And that's exactly what she did.

She returned two weeks later with everything and more besides in her bag and she walked straight through to where her mother would be, dropped the bag at her feet then, turned around and walked out. She scrubbed for hours trying to get the dirt of guilt and street grime off her and when her father asked to see her she walked in with her face pink and blotchy with scrubbed off skin. He took in her appearance wordlessly and gave her a bottle of soap and a hug.

When she tried the soap it smelt of lilies and honey. It was the one gift her father ever gave her and she resolved to be buried with it.

-o-o-o-

The day her father died was the same day she began to hate her mother.

It was her brother's fault really. He was just trying to spite her and get her to stop crying. Godo was like that, spiteful and full of hate. She hadn't understood then- she didn't really now- but that hate, that all consuming contempt for their mother was something he _needed._ He needed to hate her because he was losing himself to her and she didn't really understand it. After all when had her mother's life revolved around her? But she had accepted and brushed off his comments because, if your family don't forgive you then who will?

At his funeral she stood next to him with her hand curled up in his and stared at the ground. She couldn't watch as they cremated her father, couldn't watch as he was given back to Leviathan and at the end when a butterfly landed on her nose and smelled like lilies she broke down crying. No one but her brother even tried to comfort her and for that she loved him more than the rest of the world put together.

It's at the end when they're all leaving that she remembers that she hasn't given him her present yet. So she let go of her brother's hand and ran back, she remembers her mother briefly turning away and cold eyes looking at her, then she's running again and she can feel tears on her cheek. She runs back to the beach and there's a man sitting on the sand. He's covered in a red cape and she can see a claw absentmindedly playing with the sand. She closes her eyes and walks past him right into the sea, her hands are under the water and when she pegs the little ornamental butterfly out to sea it floats back with the waves.

She feels something blubbering and when she realises it's her she starts crying for real. She turns back to the man on the sand and screams, 'Why won't he take it? Why won't Leviathan give it to him?'

She doesn't realise that she's wondered back to him and she can feel the black silk around her and the butterflies falling off the cloth. 'Why don't I look like him? Why does my mother want me to be like her? Why does she hate guns? Why didn't he train me? Why did brother leave? Why was he so nice when everyone else was so-'

She sits on the sand facing the sea and hugs her knees, she looks up. 'Have you ever felt that there were places you don't belong?' she says to the man, the birds and the sea.

'Yes'

She looks at him and he blinks, 'Will you throw this for me.'

And so he does

She walks back and just outside the forest her brother is waiting. The second he sees her he turns and walks. When they reach the outskirts of Wutai he stops and throws a key over his head, she catches it with one hand.

'His name is Vincent Valentine.'

This is his last act of true kindness -for her or anyone else.

-o-o-o-

It rained the day she ran away.

She remembers it with clarity. She was 9 and it was 3 and a half years overdue. She recalls running through rain drops. Her bag was heavy and she could feel broken glass in her shoe from where her brother had thrown the glass bottle. She recalls throwing up in the gutter when she realises what she's done but she doesn't really remember why or when or how or what she ran away from. She can still her mother calling her horrific names and screaming six ways from Sunday.

She decides that she likes the rain, summer kind, cold is icky. She decides to be the opposite of a traditional ninja. She decides that she's going to have an epic tattoo of awesome over her back. She decides that she wants to save Wutai –albeit differently from her mother. She doesn't want people to be proud of her, she just want's to save those people she saw on the streets, that she lived with. The ones trodden on by the world, those people are the ones who _deserve_ saving.

She wants to leave behind a legacy. She wants to _burn_, she wants to shimmer and shake and show the whole planet what she's made of, what she can do.

So what if she's going to burn out, she's going to take the whole fucking universe with her.

-o-o-o-

She meets her father on a Monday

Which was a rather ominous sign considering the fact that Mondays were generally full of crap. But of all the Mondays she regrets (and believe her, there are a _shit load_ of them) she has never regretted this one. She was sick and pale and couldn't possibly sell any more Materia because she was so totally out of unmastered and stuff she didn't like. By then she'd been travelling for a little over 2 months and she was all outta sympathy for the cause.

She'd wondered into a shady part of town and straight away some sleazy guy had offered to take her in, give her a roof over her pretty little head, he'd said. She'd accepted.

The next morning the same man begged the authorities to put him in jail for prostitution.

She hated this place, more than anywhere else she'd been before. For god's sake it was raining. It had been raining all. Week. Long. It hadn't stopped. She hated it more because it was one of those freak rain showers that looked that it wouldn't stop soon and she was way, way past soaked to the bone. She was past _bone marrow_. She was freezing cold on a _cellular level. _So she decided to forgo her normal tribulations on begging for shelter.

And so, after many hours of slammed doors and swearing –she was swearing not the doors- she arrived outside a scary looking house with an even scarier tenant.

And she rang the bell.

-o-o-o-

In retrospect, stealing those boots was a really, really stupid thing to do.

In her defence they were really pretty and the guy told her she couldn't have them. On her list of things that are definitely gonna get you stolen from its no.2 just after you're not tall enough to have/ride/touch it. She's definitely going to have to review that list. She's running across rooftops and cursing people for not nailing down the tiles. Then again its _Midgar, _slum central. She looks down just as a shot from a gun whizzes past her nose. She rolls her eyes and runs a little faster and as she moves forward the boots seem to shimmer. She can hear the people getting closer and she puts more weight on the balls of her feet and prepares for a leap. She's not sure she can make it over the gap and she compensates by crouching down really low. When she kicks off the boots seem to contract for a moment and one of the pieces by the heel spreads out. Suddenly she's not supporting her weight anymore and she starts to get scared.

She hits the ground again, falls onto her side and breathes deep. She can hear the voices again and in another few seconds she s up and walking across to the edge of the building. She's about 50 meters from where she jumped and as she steps onto the ledge another decoration seems to shimmer, this time its two delicate roses that change and form into two sharp silver balls. When she touches the roses she gets a strange feeling of malice and protection. She swallows and puts one foot over the edge, leaning all her weight forward she spins down and lands perfectly on the ground. The roses seem to rally more support from the other decorations and soon the pins are forming themselves into weapons and a strange beaded decoration turns in around itself and outward all at the same time.

She pulls her fingers down across the edge looking for the zipper. She's had enough of this, she's not dying for a pair of- admittedly awesome- shoes. But as she looks the boots seem to move around her and in her head she can hear them whispering. Soon the whispering is joined by other voices and she hides behind a dumpster.

"Huh, she looks a shit load like Kisaragi."

Crap, they must have caught up.

"Must you diminish everything with profanity?"

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crapitty crap crap.

"Hellz yeah woman!"

She's desperately pulling at the laces and the zips which all seem to just disappear the second she touches them.

"Must I remind you that we are only 13."

A new voice joins the fray. Male, older than the other two probably only by a few years.

"This the girl?"

And yet another voice has her searching for an escape route. It's older and there's a clipped tone lying beneath the exterior.

"Yes, I believe her name is Yukari, more commonly known as Yui."

Shit how did they know that.

"There's no point running now Ms. Yui, the boots won't come off and we won't go away." The older woman was a scientist. It was in her tone precise and no nonsense, that she found a disproportionate amount of fear. The boots kicked up again and the leaves sown in spun like crystals, picking up the wind.

"Oh, stop it." Scientist woman says more amused than anything else. She looks up and notices the wind swirling like a turbulent shield in front of her. She touches the shield and a bit of her glove whips off.

When the wind slows down and finally stops minutes later she comes face to face with The Scientist-General, Lucielle Valkyrie, Ganit Peterman and Levi Strife.

She was never to know what brought them together and for that she is grateful.

-o-o-o-

There are many things her mother taught her and not all of them she hates.

She hates that she never loved her.

She hates that she turned her brother into what he is now.

She hates that she killed her father. Not with shiny weapons, but with words and dull indifference.

She hates that she was the second woman to break her biological father's heart and having since meet the first woman knows exactly how much it would've hurt.

She hates her because she changed herself to fit other people's image of how she should be.

She loves her because she's beautiful

She loves her because when she was 3 she used to make up stories about men with big swords and chocobo hair saving the world and the ninja's that helped them.

She loves her because to this day she still makes the best hot chocolate _ever_.

She loves her because she taught her how to protect.

She loves her because she is her _mother. _And nothing can change that.

-o-o-o-

She's standing on a beach in Wutai, Godo's standing next to her and she knows that one of the others will come thundering round to get her at any moment. Weapons are scattered over the ground, she's bleeding from one eye and a there's a bit of her arm missing. There are three horizontal lines across his face and he's leaning on his huge ass sword.

"I hate her." Godo says.

"I know." She says

"You hate her too."

"I know."

"Neither of us hate her enough."

She hesitates for a moment as a butterfly flies across the sea.

"I know."

This time he turns and faces her.

"You're exactly like her, one big fucking oxymoron."

She watches as a pair of butterflies dance in-between them.

"I know." She says.

He stares her square in the eyes

"Yeah, I guess you do." And with that he strides into the surrounding forest.

"You think you'll see him again?"

As she turns a million dollar smile which probably got him into the pants of every 20-something girl from here to Junon -and the baby blues that doubtlessly undressed the rest of them- greet her with a jovial wave. He's leaning against his bike and lazily flinging around his hair. She'll probably never tell him the answer he wants to hear and she knows he'll never ask for it, such goes the partnership of two people who could _definitely _do better but are never willing really try.

"Shit pretty boy, you scared the fuck outta me."

"Like hell I did."

"Was that some smartass pretty boy?"

He ignores her –hell, he's got what? 11 years of practice- and repeats the question.

But hell, he knows the answer. It's always been the same.

So she turns around and sings under her breath, _'When all you gotta keep you strong, Move along, Move along like I know you do, And even when your hope is gone, Move along, Move along...just to make it through' _she walks straight past his bike and jumps up into the canopy.

He shrugs, turns around and walks after her.

-o-o-o-

Mostly she hates her mother because deep down they're exactly the same and it bugs her more than anyone can imagine.

-o-o-o-

THE END

This has been in my head since the first time I heard that song...


End file.
